R. Han

How deep is the mulch?

From my personal experiences wasps become docile if they have suffient water.

Last year i had a through where i kept some stuff in to not have it scattered over the place,
water accumulated in the bottom, but for the items in it that was ok.

Wasps build a nest in a pot that was partially submerged into said water,
and they never bothered when i took stuff out, even when i moved the nest.

Really can't wait for them ro reappear soon, to get rid of the mosquitos!

However i have once been stund in the city: Wasp somehow flew in my face and found itself between my face and my glasses...stund my eyebrow,
it was swollen, but it could have beend worse...

R. Han wrote:
Does the book deal with the core of the free ranging problem,
i.e. that Chicken are forrest animal and not suited for a lawn/meadow?

This video shows chicken on a farm with poplar trees. Even if you don't know german,
you will clearly see that chicken prefer to be close to the trees to being in the open.

There are claims that a ploskorez is sufficent for all weeding.
Can someone confirm this or name a better tool?

Why not doing what we call chop and drop?
This would be getting a scythe (has to have straight handle) and just scything the place couple of times/year snd leaving the debris where it is,
also you don't bother with roots.

You'd get great soil by doing that!

Why did you divide it instead of planting it as the big chunk it was?

Davis Tyler wrote:They produce a decent crop the first year, then a half crop the second year plus some daughter runners, then by the third year they die back and I have to buy new plants again

I think i heard in a yuotube video (maybe Curtis Stone?), that strawberries produce better if they are replanted.
Also saw neigbours happily replanting them and having surplus plants that are destined for compost (or giveaway if you interfere on time  ).

Are there any varieties of strawberries that don't succumb to these viruses?

Key to robustness to viruses ist genetic diversity. Try growing some from seed if viruses are your concern.

Miles Flansburg wrote:What do you need help with?

Also i am not shure how to make the basins for the filter.
It would definetly need to be half-watercylce and not full-watercycle,
to prevent contamination of the ground.

If i use gley, the gley layer might accumulate some heavy metals and radioactives over time,
but the glay layer can be taken out and its organic matter then separated from the the toxins.
So by using gley, regular maintenance is a must.

However plastic/concrete/metal might be safer from seepage,
but became an pollutant at the end of its lifetime plus those materials
could also pollute the environment during their lifetime.

Probably best would be basins made of monolithic rocks that had been carved out,
but aquiring them in the desired volume would make me sad about the mountain it used to be.

Anne Miller wrote:Thanks for sharing Bill Mollison's Water Filter and Sewer Treatment system.

Thanks for replying.

Anne Miller wrote:Ben, Bill's suggestion as you can see in the diagram uses Mussel shells not live mussels.

Actually it uses both. There are live freshwater mussels in the filter. So it is providing for its own mussel shells and allows replicating the filter after some time.
The mussels probably also trap nasty stuff in their shell, and they dont degrade as fast as limestone rock etc.
As for the initial batch of mussels i can probably work out something with the local authorities to source exaclty
the species that used to live here, to introduce them to my ecosystem, and hopefully later reintroduce them to their former habitat.

My thougth was whether the initial batch of mussel shells is allowed to be from saltwater mussels,
as they are so easy to come by. It is just one detail of many.

Well i personally need to filter out water that runs from the Highway to my garden/farm under construction,
so i need to start building a Mollison filter, and  need to get the details figured out.

It is difficult for me to source freshwater mussel shells, can i also use saltwater mussel shells?